PAL pixel aspect ratio issue

[billr55829350]

I'm working with some old PAL footage, 720x576.  Premier says its PAL pixel aspect ratio is 1.0940; however the correct pixel aspect for this resolution is supposed to be 1.0666.  When I export my clip from Premier to pass to another program for more processing, that other program miscomputes the aspect of the image, probably because Adobe has encoded it with a pixel aspect of 1.0940.

I have tried exporting and manually setting the pixel aspect to 1.0666 (16/15), and that does create a correct aspect video, but Premier shrinks the image, so there are black bars above & below it, and to the sides.

Is there a way to tell Premier to use 1.0666 instead of 1.0940 as a pixel aspect for PAL?

[Steve Griffiths]

Don't quite follow, the two aspect ratios for PAL SD footage (720x576) are 1.0940 for 4x3 and 1.4587 for widescreen.

Both are choices in the >modify > interpret footage dialogue panel.

The only thing I can think of is if you have a non-standard source that has square pixels? Perhaps try interpreting the footage to 'square pixels' and see if that gets you what you want.

Media 100 did use a square pixel PAL format in the 1990's but that was 768x576 pixels.

[billr55829350]

Thank you for your response.  I have studied up on pixel aspect ratio, and have a [slightly] better understanding of it now.  I studied this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_aspect_ratio 
I found that my footage of 720x576 would scale to be exactly 4:3, using the PAR of 1.06.  The adoption of 1.09 is based on 704x576, which is considered [I think] the displayable portion of PAL.  So that explains to me why they adopted this value.
I think my problem is not really in Premier, as much as it's in the program I'm using for post-processing, which is Topaz Video AI.  Topaz properly interprets my footage directly from Handbrake, off of DVD; but once I have processed it with Premier, Topaz becomes confused about its aspect ratio, and renders the output too narrow in appearance.
I found I can import the Topaz-generated footage, which has the wrong aspect, into Premier, and scale it.  I found a scale factor of 106.7 works quite well, which is of course the scale factor to convert 720x576 to 4:3 exactly; this tells me Topaz is interpreting the footage as having square pixels.
I contacted Topaz about this, and they indicate they believe this is a bug in their software.

[billr55829350]

Oh, and out of curiousity, I tried taking the footage exported by Adobe in PAL (which Topaz has trouble reading), and running it back through Handbrake, to see if Handbrake would add some metadata that Topaz needed; but no dice, that did not help.

[Ann Bens]

With the release of CS4 Adobe change the pixel aspect from 1.06 to 1.09 to meet international standard.

To avoid this issue on export use square pixels: 788x576.

[billr55829350]

Thanks for responding.  I tried this, and found that the aspect is correct after doing this, but the image has been shrunk, so there are black bars across the top & bottom.

[Ann Bens]

Can you upload a short clip for testing.

I am editing some old D8 footage and processing it through Topaz too.

Cannot you rip the dvd without using Handbrake by copying the vobs to hdd?

 I do Topaz first, then edit in Premiere.

[billr55829350]

I normally rip from DVD with MakeMKV, which creates an mkv image of the disk.  Topaz handles this fine.  The MKV is interlaced, so I also run it through Handbrake to make a non-interlaced version, which I use for other AI in Topaz besides the DioneTV de-interlacer.  This also works just fine.

But I have a very noisy video that I ran through Neat Video's de-noise plugin (which is amazing), and then I want to run that through Topaz as my source for the AI, and that is where I am having trouble.  Bringing the Handbrake-generated PAL file into Premier, applying the denoise, then exporting it, makes Topaz not be able to read it correctly.
I cannot provide test video from this project as it's copyrighted, and I am under contract to do this work.

[billr55829350]

Oh and like you, I also usually run my video through Topaz, then bring the results into Premier for editing.

[Warren Heaton · Accepted solution]

Switch to After Effects for deinterlacing and conforming to Square Pixel instead of using Handbrake.

Import the PAL clips and create a New Comp from each or string them out in a single Comp.

After Effects will seperate fields (that is, deinterlace them) on-the-fly upon import into the After Effects project.

Change the Comp settings to 720x540 Square Pixel for 4:3 and 960x540 Square Pixel for 16:9.  Use Layer > Transform > Fit to Comp to fit the PAL Source exactly to the manually set square pixel frame sizes.  

If using the Render Queue, set the Render Settings to Best Settings and the Output Module to High Quality (if you're using an older version of After Effects, start with Lossless but change the Video Settings from Animation to Apple ProRes 422 HQ).

If using Adobe Media Encoder, set the Format to QuickTime and the Preset to Apple ProRes 422 HQ.

Send the resulting 540p25 ProRes clips to Topaz Labs for upconversion.

[billr55829350]

Would I want to use 576 instead of 540?  I don't want to lose any resolution.  The video is 720x576.

[Warren Heaton]

Sure, you can use 768-by-576 instead for 4:3 and 1024-by-576 for 16:9.  Just make sure "Pixel Aspect Ratio" is set to Square Pixels.

[billr55829350]

I'll try this on my next video, thanks!  I've spent most of my time learning Premier, and am still pretty new to After Effects; I use it to do a lot of clone/stamp operations for repairs.  I had no idea it could handle an interlaced MKV file.

[billr55829350]

Happy to report this worked...mostly 🙂  After Effects was not able to import the MKV file (which was generated with MakeMKV), so I still used Handbrake for the de-interlace, but was able to convert to square pixels using After Effects.

Many thanks for your help!

[billr55829350]

Actually, there are cases where I would like to bring the original interlaced footage into Premier (or After Effects).  How would I be able to do that, if AE or Premier cannot load the MKV?

[Ann Bens]

I believe the beta will import mkv.